Category Archives: Issues

CAMPAIGN 08, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: A new face for American diplomacy

A new face for American diplomacy
By Hooman Majd, Salon, February 21, 2008

When I was in Tehran, Iran, a year ago, I was asked by several senior government officials, including former President Mohammad Khatami, what to make of Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States. The young senator from Illinois was still barely on the international radar then. My response was that I couldn’t see Americans nominating, let alone electing, a black man whose middle name was Hussein. My answer, clearly wrong in hindsight, stirred smiles and raised eyebrows among the Iranian leaders because they’d had no idea that Obama had a Muslim father. Even more surprising to them was that he carried, apparently without shame, a Muslim name. From Khatami this elicited an “Ajab!” — Farsi for, essentially, “You’ve got to be kidding!” There were also many nods of agreement with my conclusion about Obama’s chances.

At this point in the presidential race, although it is deeply heartening that I was so wrong in my judgment of American voters, Obama’s great potential to connect with the Muslim world, and to change how Muslims perceive the United States, is conspicuously absent from our national debate. A crucial question about who should be the next president is whether Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain is most likely to be able to heal the rift between the U.S. and much of the rest of the world, a rift not created but dangerously widened by the administration of George W. Bush. What is abundantly clear now — at least to many foreigners and particularly to Muslims in the Third World — is that Barack Obama is the candidate by far the best suited to begin healing that rift and restoring America’s global reputation, and perhaps even to begin reversing decades of anti-Americanism. Obama would begin a presidency with a huge advantage in terms of world perception. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The promise of an Obama presidency can easily be overstated, but what makes the view of the future much more interesting is to tie it to the present. Already there are very positive indications coming out of the Middle East suggesting that a President Obama would be warmly and enthusiastically received.

Consider this account from Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution. She’s been attending the 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, which brings together Americans with Muslims from Nigeria to Malaysia and everywhere in between. She notes that this year there has been a tidal shift in attitudes towards America veering away from the hostility of recent times, but then she goes on to provide this unexpected explanation for the change in mood:

Quite honestly, though, I don’t think the relative love-fest at this year’s meeting is all ascribable either to regional shifts or to the conference organizers’ choice of speakers. The most powerful explanation for the change is evident in the overwhelming fact that all anyone at this conference really wants to talk about is Barack Obama. [My emphasis]

A friend from the Gulf tells me her young relative was so excited about the Democratic candidate that he tried to donate money over the Internet, as he’d heard so many young Americans were doing. Then he found out he had to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Another young woman, visiting from next-door Saudi Arabia, said that all her friends in Riyadh are “for Obama.” The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia, certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.

But more important is just the prospect of a refreshing shift in the the breeze off the Potomac. More than the changes in the region, it seems to be anticipated changes in Washington that are drawing the eyes of my Arab counterparts and giving the conference its unusually forward-looking tone. We’ll see how long the honeymoon lasts! [Thanks to Marc Lynch for bringing this to my attention.]

Change might be coming, but I seriously doubt it can come fast enough that Obama could turn his global popularity into an electoral advantage. Even so, there’s no question that herein lies a major part of his promise.

EDITORIAL: For the New York Times, self-confidence on ethics poses its own risk — prigs can fall too

New York Times Exclusive Rumor: McCain in bed with lobbyist… maybe… at least we talked to a couple of people who thought that some other people might think that it looked like that was happening… maybe… at least we thought this was fit to print… at least fit to print if The New Republic was going to run it anyway
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, February 21, 2008

Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Stephen Labaton, along with research by Barclay Walsh and Kitty Bennett — a veritable posse of journalists! Are they all hoping they have a shot at getting a Pulizer prize? I don’t think so. This is about strength in numbers. No one wants to carry the can for a story destined for a special place in the New York Times‘ hall of fame for lousy journalism.

Now if John McCain really was in bed with a lobbyist that would be real news. Not necessarily something that the Times could bring itself to condense into a pithy little, no-nonsense, blaring headline.

Instead we have this story: “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” Which is to say, there are indications that John McCain may have exercised an error in judgment by thinking that his own confidence in his own integrity meant that others would share that same confidence even when presented with the appearance that he might in fact be acting with a lack of integrity. (R.D. Laing would appreciate that — read Knots and you’ll know what I mean.) Oh, and by the way, McCain might actually have been having an affair. But we don’t know that — we just know that a few people thought that might be happening, but we don’t know who those people are, just that they included two associates “who said they had become disillusioned with the senator.” And that’s news? Gordon Bennett!

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The triumph of narrative

The triumph of narrative
By Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, February 19, 2008

Though we may or may not have reached the end of the unexpected upsets and dramatic reversals of the primaries, much less the general election to come, there is no doubt that of all the people who ran for president this year, Obama has run the smartest and most skilled campaign. But of all the things he has done right, none may be more important than the fact that he has told far and away the best story.

This is a topic I addressed in two previous columns, and now that one nominee is chosen and the other will be soon (at least within a few months), it seemed appropriate to revisit the question of the narratives the candidates have built (the first installment is here, and the second is here). Those columns were written in July, but even before that—indeed, as long ago as his explosion into national consciousness at the Democratic convention in 2004—Obama has been telling a story perfectly keyed to the current moment in history.

As Obama tells it, the country is held hostage by a political class that sows partisan and cultural division, making solving problems ever more difficult, while the country yearns for a new day of unity. As the youngest candidate, the only post-boomer candidate, the only bi-racial candidate, and the one candidate with a preternatural ability to obtain the good will of those who disagree with him, he can bring all Americans together and lead us to a future built on hope.

Your own reaction to that story may be a quickening of the heartbeat, or a disgusted ‘”Give me a break.'” But there is no denying that many, many people are willing to sign on to it. And though he is careful not to say it himself, Obama”s story benefits greatly from how often other people say that he is a Man of Destiny. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This has been the week where the cult meme really took off among the chattering classes — it’s a topic I hope to write about at greater length soon.

Either we’re now witnessing one of the biggest, fastest growing cults ever seen, as a wave of intemperate enthusiasm is compelling people to suspend their critical judgement. Or, the support Obama is getting — support that comes from vastly more people than attend his rallies — is actually an exercise in critical judgement that commentators prefer to diminish. What’s irrational about imagining that America would be well served by a president who can inspire enthusiasm and who in a divided country and a divided world has the power to bring people together? We’re at a fork in the road. One way leads to tribalism, fractured societies, and ultimately our demise. The other way hinges on the understanding that we share a collective fate.

OPINION: A ‘challenge’ worth challenging

A ‘challenge’ worth challenging
By E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, February 19, 2008

The boilerplate in a candidate’s speeches gets little attention because words used over and over never constitute “news.”

But one of John McCain’s favorite lines — his declaration that “the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists,” or, as he sometimes says, “extremism” — could define the 2008 election.

Whether McCain is right or wrong matters to everything the United States will do in the coming years. It is incumbent upon McCain to explain what he really means by “transcendent challenge.”

Presumably, he’s saying that Islamic extremism is more important than everything else — the rise of China and India as global powers, growing resistance to American influence in Europe, the weakening of America’s global economic position, the disorder and poverty in large parts of Africa, the alienation of significant parts of Latin America from the United States. Is it in our national interest for all these issues to take a back seat to terrorism?

McCain makes his claim even stronger when he uses the phrase “21st century.” Does he mean that in the year 2100, Americans will look back and say that everything else that happened in the century paled in comparison with the war against terrorism?

But such a debate won’t happen unless Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton challenge McCain’s assertion directly and offer an alternative vision. There is reason to suspect they might fear doing so. They shouldn’t. [complete article]

NEWS: Unilateral strike called a model for U.S. operations in Pakistan

Unilateral strike called a model for U.S. operations in Pakistan
By Joby Warrick and Robin Wright, Washington Post, February 19, 2008

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone’s operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA’s dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. [complete article]

OPINION, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The breadth of Obama’s support

Forget the Kool-Aid: Obama’s support is real
By Steve Kornacki, New York Observer, February 18, 2008

While it’s certainly true that his speeches represent sweeping statements of vision—and not, until recently, laundry lists of policy proposals—he has also presented original and specific ideas about what he would do as President.

It could be argued, for instance, that Obama’s pledge to sit down face-to-face with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most substantively meaningful plank in any candidate’s platform in 2008, a wholesale departure from the past 28 years of U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic—and from the cautiously conventional approach articulated by Hillary Clinton, who memorably branded Obama’s posture “naïve.”

And when he talks about “ending the mind-set that got us into war,” Obama raises the possibility of an administration whose global vision would not be shaped by the stale, nonpartisan national security establishment that has infected the thinking of both political parties for decades—and that helped convince an overwhelming bipartisan Congressional majority (Clinton included) to choose war in 2002.

But the real problem with sneering at the fervor that Obama has stirred is that it ignores how elections are won and how governing coalitions are built. The truth is that even voters who aren’t moved by Obama’s substantive appeal are still, by and large, favorably impressed by him and willing to at least consider voting for him. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Cynicism that parades itself as worldly wisdom is generally no such thing. Most often it is the psychological armor through which we protect ourselves from disappointment. It insulates us from the vulnerability of being wrong. It provides us with justifications for shying away from risks without revealing our fears.

Obama must tame America for the continent of his ancestors
By Okello Oculi, The Nation (Nigeria), February 15, 2008

Barack Obama, now leading Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primaries ahead of key battles in Texas, has come like rain on American politics.

His campaign theme – ‘the source of new hope on a parched land’ is a cleansing agent in a land weighed down by crusted blood of Iraqis murdered in their own territory by Americans who came to save them from “weapons of mass destruction”.

Obama has come as rain from a Kenyan cloud that seeded in the plains of Iowa and fell in Hawaii, but refuses to be tied down as just another “black candidate” pushing primarily for the restoration of justice for African-Americans by reminding white America of its guilt.

Instead, he insists on the freedom of a collective American Messiah who has come to mobilise all disillusioned children of American democracy to open up a new frontier in politics. This is Obama’s venture of building hope using the power of hope. [complete article]

OPINION & FEATURE: American torture past and present

Debating torture and counterinsurgency — a century ago
By Paul Kramer, The New Yorker, February 25, 2008

Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines. The brief campaign was pitched to the American public in terms of freedom and national honor (the U.S.S. Maine had blown up mysteriously in Havana Harbor), rather than of sugar and naval bases, and resulted in a formally independent Cuba.

The Americans were not done liberating. Rising trade in East Asia suggested to imperialists that the Philippines, Spain’s largest colony, might serve as an effective “stepping stone” to China’s markets. U.S. naval plans included provisions for an attack on the Spanish Navy in the event of war, and led to a decisive victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in May, 1898. Shortly afterward, Commodore George Dewey returned the exiled Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo to the islands. Aguinaldo defeated Spanish forces on land, declared the Philippines independent in June, and organized a government led by the Philippine élite.

During the next half year, it became clear that American and Filipino visions for the islands’ future were at odds. U.S. forces seized Manila from Spain—keeping the army of their ostensible ally Aguinaldo from entering the city—and President William McKinley refused to recognize Filipino claims to independence, pushing his negotiators to demand that Spain cede sovereignty over the islands to the United States, while talking about Filipinos’ need for “benevolent assimilation.” Aguinaldo and some of his advisers, who had been inspired by the United States as a model republic and had greeted its soldiers as liberators, became increasingly suspicious of American motivations. When, after a period of mounting tensions, a U.S. sentry fired on Filipino soldiers outside Manila in February, 1899, the second war erupted, just days before the Senate ratified a treaty with Spain securing American sovereignty over the islands in exchange for twenty million dollars. In the next three years, U.S. troops waged a war to “free” the islands’ population from the regime that Aguinaldo had established. The conflict cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and about four thousand U.S. soldiers.

Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.” [complete article]

The timing of the Guantanamo trials is not an accident
By Charles Swift, Slate, February 15, 2008

During the course of my career as a defense lawyer in the military, I’ve shrugged off many government conspiracy theories. Each time I heard one, I’d smile and say that one should never attribute to a vast government conspiracy acts that can be as readily attributed to mere government incompetence or accident. So, I did not initially assume any concerted plan or purpose behind recent activities at Guantanamo Bay.

But the government’s latest moves in the ongoing battle over the legality of its detention policies are anything but incompetent, and they’ve forced me to reassess my initial conclusion: The decision to try six Guantanamo detainees using military commissions is very clearly part of a concerted effort to use the Guantanamo commissions to subvert the goals of justice and to maintain a veil of secrecy around its questionable interrogation policies. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: After the siege of Gaza

Hamas doesn’t want a separate Gaza
By Ahmed Yousef, Daily Star, February 18, 2008

Many Western observers, politicians and journalists considered the recent breach of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt a victory for the Hamas movement. Some viewed it as the beginning of the end of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people. The statement by Luisa Morgantini, the vice president of the European Parliament, was an example of this. The breach in the wall and the thousands of Palestinians crossing the border, she said, “are all true acts of resistance and an affirmation of the freedom of that people.”

The purpose of crossing the frontier was not to embarrass Egypt, challenge its sovereignty or threaten its security. It was a message to the forces of the Israeli occupation and the international community that the pressure to bring down the government of Premier Ismail Haniyya by starving the people of Gaza to death will not succeed and will not break the steadfastness and determination of the Palestinian people or end their legitimate resistance. [complete article]

Officials: Gaza op will bring int’l troops
By Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2008

Israel is considering a large-scale incursion into the Gaza Strip during which it would present an ultimatum to the international community for the deployment of a multinational force as the only condition under which it would withdraw, defense officials have told The Jerusalem Post.
[…]
“We are talking about the Second Lebanon War model,” a defense official said. “To go to war and tell the world that if they want a cease-fire and for us to leave then they will need to send a force to replace us.” [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: Faith in elimination

Israel’s self-defeating ‘liquidation’
By Uri Avnery, Rootless Cosmopolitan, February 16, 2008

If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, his answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for hundreds of millions. Little Israel is one of the major hi-tech powers in the world. But the profession in which Israel is not only one of the biggest, but the unchallenged Numero Uno is: liquidations.

This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb “lekhassel” – liquidate – in all its grammatical forms, currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to “liquidate” and whom. Used generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of “liquidation”, its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for “liquidation”.

Indeed, for a long time now there has not been such an orgy of jubilation and self-congratulation in the Israeli media as there was this week. Every reporter, every commentator, every political hack, every transient celeb interviewed on TV, on the radio and in the newspapers, was radiant with pride. We have done it! We have succeeded! We have “liquidated” Imad Mughniyeh! [complete article]

Israel kills terror chief with headrest bomb
By Uzi Mahnaimi, Hala Jaber and Jon Swain, Sunday Times, February 17, 2008

At 10.35pm he decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.

Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge. Israel welcomed his death but the prime minister’s office denied responsibility. Hezbollah accused the “Zionist Israelis” of killing its “brother commander” but believed the explosive had been detonated in another car by satellite.
[…]
Informed Israeli sources said that at the time of his death Mughniyeh was working for the Syrians on a terrorist attack against Israeli targets. This was to avenge Israel’s airstrike on what was believed to be a secret nuclear site in Syria last year. [complete article]

Israel’s ‘non-denial denial’ in Hezbollah death
By Cam Simpson, Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2008

Did they or didn’t they?

The question is still rippling across the world today. Did Israel have a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of one of its most despised enemies, the Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh?

The answer remains unclear, but one thing is absolutely, positively certain: Israel has not denied it.

Several international news outlets continue today to mistakenly report that Israel has denied killing Mughniyeh. But Israel has done nothing of the sort. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08: Jewish functionaries stirring the Clinton-Obama race

Jewish functionaries stirring the Clinton-Obama race
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, February 16, 2008

Tensions in the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination are mirrored in the American Jewish community. As the gap between the front-runners narrowed in the primaries, the clash between the two Jewish camps has become more heated.

Official Israel is making an effort to maintain a respectable neutrality. Has-beens are being called into the ring, like a former ambassador to Washington, Dan Ayalon, who jabbed Obama in a sensitive spot – the volume of his support for Israel. Ayalon is not alone. Jewish advisers and non-Jewish supporters are almost obsessively occupied with searching for skeletons in the black candidate’s past.

The Republican Party’s neoconservative clique is trawling archives for “anti-Israeli” essays by advisers who had been seen in Obama’s staff. Robert Malley, who was President Bill Clinton’s special assistant during the Camp David talks, joined Obama. The neoconservatives reached Malley’s father, a Jew of Egyptian descent, who, alas, kept childhood ties with Yasser Arafat. Malley junior is accused of publishing a joint article with an Oslo-supporting Palestinian, in which they dared to argue that Ehud Barak played a major role in the Camp David summit’s failure in July 2000. [complete article]

FEATURE: The economic drive to turn to Islam

Stifled, Egypt’s young turn to Islamic fervor
By Michale Slackman, New York Times, February 17, 2008

The concrete steps leading from Ahmed Muhammad Sayyid’s first-floor apartment sag in the middle, worn down over time, like Mr. Sayyid himself. Once, Mr. Sayyid had a decent job and a chance to marry. But his fiancée’s family canceled the engagement because after two years, he could not raise enough money to buy an apartment and furniture.

Mr. Sayyid spun into depression and lost nearly 40 pounds. For months, he sat at home and focused on one thing: reading the Koran. Now, at 28, with a diploma in tourism, he is living with his mother and working as a driver for less than $100 a month. With each of life’s disappointments and indignities, Mr. Sayyid has drawn religion closer.

Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their abilities or aspirations, they are stuck in limbo between youth and adulthood.

“I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?” Mr. Sayyid said one day after becoming so overwhelmed that he refused to go to work, or to go home, and spent the day hiding at a friend’s apartment.

In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them.

With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.

The wave of religious identification has forced governments that are increasingly seen as corrupt or inept to seek their own public redemption through religion. In Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Algeria, leaders who once headed secular states or played down religion have struggled to reposition themselves as the guardians of Islamic values. More and more parents are sending their children to religious schools, and some countries have infused more religious content into their state educational systems. [complete article]

NEWS: American lessons on torture

Justice official defends rough CIA interrogations
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, February 17, 2008

The Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were “quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening,” as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to constitute illegal torture, a senior Justice Department official said last week.

In testimony before a House subcommittee, Steven G. Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, spelled out how the administration regulated the CIA’s use of rough tactics and offered new details of how simulated drowning was used to compel disclosures by prisoners suspected of being al-Qaeda members.

The method was not, he said, like the “water torture” used during the Spanish Inquisition and by autocratic governments into the 20th century, but was subject to “strict time limits, safeguards, restrictions.” He added, “The only thing in common is, I think, the use of water.”

Bradbury indicated that no water entered the lungs of the three prisoners who were subjected to the practice, lending credence to previous accounts that the noses and mouths of CIA captives were covered in cloth or cellophane. Cellophane could pose a serious asphyxiation risk, torture experts said.

Bradbury’s unusually frank testimony Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee subcommittee stunned many civil liberties advocates and outside legal scholars who have long criticized the Bush administration’s secretive and aggressive interrogation policies.

Martin S. Lederman, a former Office of Legal Counsel official who teaches law at Georgetown University, called Bradbury’s testimony “chilling.” In an online posting, Lederman said that “to say that this is not severe physical suffering — is not torture — is absurd. And to invoke the defense that what the Spanish Inquisition did was worse and that we use a more benign, non-torture form of waterboarding . . . is obscene.” [complete article]

NEWS: CIA’s ambitious post-9/11 spy plan crumbles

CIA’s ambitious post-9/11 spy plan crumbles
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2008

The CIA set up a network of front companies in Europe and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of a constellation of “black stations” for a new generation of spies, according to current and former agency officials.

But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars setting up as many as 12 of the companies, the agency shut down all but two after concluding they were ill-conceived and poorly positioned for gathering intelligence on the CIA’s principal targets: terrorist groups and unconventional weapons proliferation networks.

The closures were a blow to two of the CIA’s most pressing priorities after the 2001 terrorist attacks: expanding its overseas presence and changing the way it deploys spies.

The companies were the centerpiece of an ambitious plan to increase the number of case officers sent overseas under what is known as “nonofficial cover,” meaning they would pose as employees of investment banks, consulting firms or other fictitious enterprises with no apparent ties to the U.S. government. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The Obama cult

And Obama wept
By Jake Tapper, ABC News, February 7, 2008

Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.

It’s as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, “Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat.”

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she’s “getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama’s supporters. On listservs I’m on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, “Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of ‘coming to Obama’ in the same way born-again Christians talk about ‘coming to Jesus.’…So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Among independently minded people there’s a natural tendency when meeting the force of a crowd, to want to move the opposite way — or at least stand in place and not get swept along in the flow. Popularity so rarely seems to be an index of good judgment. Thus it’s easy to see why the Obama current provokes a measure of skepticism. Sure, I can see his charisma and I can hear his eloquence, says the skeptic, but give me the hard facts. I need some specifics. I need to know what this man will do if we put him in the White House.

It’s a curious form of realism this. It seems to say, I attach more significance to what a politician promises, than I do to what I can assess of his or her character. It seems to imply that a checklist of the correct policy positions is a reliable indicator of what might happen.

I’m inclined to believe that Obama is realistic enough to know that the time to make the boldest declarations and the time to act as a progressive leader comes after receiving a mandate. Seeking and receiving a mandate for change opens up a whole lot of possibilities.

NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The atrophy of conscience

Anybody’s guess
By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, February 8, 2008

It’s been a banner week for water-boarding. This centuries-old practice of simulated drowning to extract false confessions and false testimony has really benefited of late from a good old legal reassessment and a smoking-hot PR campaign. In the course of a few short years, water-boarding has morphed from torture that unquestionably violates both federal and international law to an indispensable tool in the fight against terror. [complete article]

Waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture: U.N.
Reuters, February 8, 2008

The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

“I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City. [complete article]

Cheney defends U.S. use of waterboarding
CBS/AP, February 8, 2008

The debate over waterboarding flared Thursday on Capitol Hill, with the CIA director raising doubts about whether it’s currently legal and the attorney general refusing to investigate U.S. interrogators who have used the technique on terror detainees.

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, said “it’s a good thing” that top al Qaeda figures underwent the harsh interrogation tactic in 2002 and 2003, claiming they were forced to give up information that helped protect the country and saved “thousands” of American lives. [complete article]

Justice Dept. ‘cannot’ probe waterboarding, Mukasey says
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, February 8, 2008

The attorney general yesterday rejected growing congressional calls for a criminal investigation of the CIA’s use of simulated drownings to extract information from its detainees, as Vice President Cheney called it a “good thing” that the CIA was able to learn what it did from those subjected to the practice.

The remarks reflected a renewed effort by the Bush administration to defend its past approval of the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding, which some lawmakers, human rights experts and international lawyers have described as illegal torture. [complete article]

CIA chief doubts tactic to interrogate is still legal
By Scott Shane, New York Times, February 8, 2008

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a Congressional committee on Thursday that waterboarding may be illegal under current law, despite assertions this week from the director of national intelligence and the White House that the harsh interrogation method may be used in the future.

General Hayden said that while “all the techniques we’ve used have been deemed to be lawful,” laws have changed since waterboarding was last used nearly five years ago.

“It is not included in the current program, and in my own view, the view of my lawyers and the Department of Justice, it is not certain that the technique would be considered to be lawful under current statute,” General Hayden said before the House Intelligence Committee. [complete article]

Waterboarding: Two questions for Michael Hayden
By Andy Worthington, Antiwar, February 7, 2008

My questions for Mr. Hayden are simple. Firstly, if it’s true that only three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, then why did a number of “former and current intelligence officers and supervisors” tell ABC News in November 2005 that “a dozen top al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe” were subjected to six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” instituted in mid-March 2002?

According to the ABC News account, the six techniques used by the CIA on the “dozen top al-Qaeda targets” were “The Attention Grab,” “Attention Slap,” “The Belly Slap” and three other techniques that are particularly worrying: “Long Time Standing,” “The Cold Cell,” and, of course, “Waterboarding.”

“Long Time Standing” was described as “among the most effective [techniques],” in which prisoners “are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours.” The ABC News report added, “Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.” In “The Cold Cell,” the prisoner “is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.”

The description of “Waterboarding” was as follows: “The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — There’s a simple reason why the simple-minded don’t think that waterboarding is torture. In “real” torture, the person being tortured is the innocent victim; the torturer is the evil party. When Cheney ventured over to the dark side it was in order to give good people the freedom to do bad things to bad people. If the person being tortured is bad, then it can’t be torture. It’s perverse logic but it explains how a vice president with a twisted mind can have a “clean” conscience.

EDITORIAL: Point of view

Point of view
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, February 8, 2008

On yesterday’s confessions page, the New York Times, with due humility and a heavy heart acknowledged that it had been unwittingly complicit in the ultimate journalistic crime. On Tuesday, a front-page article dealt with the case of Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, an Afghan war hero who died recently after five years detention in Guantanamo. The article included in the byline the name of a journalist who the editors of the Times were shocked and dismayed to discover was a man with a point of view.

Andy Worthington, a freelance journalist who worked on the article under contract with The New York Times and was listed as its co-author, did some of the initial reporting but was not involved in all of it, and The Times verified the information he provided.

The Times stands by the information in the article but it doesn’t want to stand by Mr Worthington. Why? Because, “he takes the position that Guantanamo is part of what he describes as a cruel and misguided response by the Bush administration to the Sept. 11 attacks. He has also expressed strong criticism of Guantanamo in articles published elsewhere.” Had the Times been aware that Mr Worthington was guilty of having an “outspoken position” his name would not have been allowed to enter the hallowed territory reserved for opinionless truth seekers like Judith Miller.

CAMPAIGN 08: An Obama sweep?

An Obama sweep? What are the possibilities?
By John Nichols, The Nation, February 4, 2008

What would a sweep look like? Obama would not have to win every state or every delegate, but he would have to dominate the map in a manner that left no doubt that Democratic primary and caucus voters prefer his candidacy to that of the woman who not long ago was busy outlining her Democratic National Convention acceptance speech.

To do this, Obama would has to begin by winning California convincingly. That’s possible. He’s moved even or ahead most Golden State polls. Clinton is drawing huge crowds and working the state aggressively; and Obama’s decision to focus most of his campaigning elsewhere in the final days is risky. But if Obama gets California and reaps the benefits of the broader focus, he is on his way to the kind of day that could transform American politics. [complete article]

Raising Obama
By Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair, February 4, 2008

Obama’s good looks and soft-spoken willingness to ponder aloud some of the inanities of modern politics have masked the hard inner core and unyielding ambition that have long burned beneath the surface shimmer. He is not, and never has been, soft. He’s not laid-back. He’s not an accidental man. His friends and family may be surprised by the rapidity of his rise, but they’re not surprised by the fact of it. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Iran’s permanent security headache and frail economy

Iran tries to make up lost ground
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, February 5, 2008

The conventional wisdom, particularly in the United States, is that Iran has gained from the US’s invasion of Iran’s neighbors since the events of September 11, 2001. Yet, a careful reading of the changing security calculus caused by the exponential increase in the US’s military presence in Iran’s vicinity leads to the opposite conclusion.

Sure, Iran has gained from the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein and his dreaded Sunni Ba’athist regime in Iraq, yet the problem with the standard analyses, for example by the US’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, is that even though they are couched in the language of “balance of power”, nonetheless these analyses are tainted by a major gap. That is, forgetting the US superpower’s role in the equation that, on balance, has tipped the scales away from Iran, in a word, amounting to a net loss for the country.

Until now, no one in the US has questioned what has become an article of faith in the US media and a kind of self-evident truth to so many US politicians, such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. [complete article]

A frail economy raises pressure on Iran’s rulers
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, February 3, 2008

In one of the coldest winters Iranians have experienced in recent memory, the government is failing to provide natural gas to tens of thousands of people across the country, leaving some for days or even weeks with no heat at all. Here in the capital, rolling blackouts every night for a month have left people without electricity, and heat, for hours at a time.

The heating crisis in this oil-exporting nation is adding to Iranians’ increasing awareness of the contrast between their growing influence abroad and frailty at home, according to government officials, diplomats and political analysts interviewed here.

From fundamentalists to reformists, people here are talking more loudly about the need for a more pragmatic approach, one that tones down the anti-Western rhetoric, at least a bit, and focuses more on improving management of the country and restoring Iran’s economic health. [complete article]